DNC makes Spanish calls on shutdown

The Democratic National Committee is launching Spanish-language online ads and robocalls targeting Republicans on the government shutdown, it announced Thursday.

The effort is the third phase of a broader campaign this week that has been hitting Republicans in their home states, including House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), as well as early voting states Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

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The calls in Florida and Texas will focus on attacking Sens. Rubio and Cruz in their home states, while the ones in Nevada and Arizona will target the Republican Party as a whole. The message of the call specifically mentions the shutdown’s impact on Latino communities, according to a script.

In a sample of the Florida call script, the message says, “Rubio’s shutdown” costs the economy as much as $10 billion a week.

“Sen. Marco Rubio was an architect of the GOP’s government shutdown and it’s hurting the Latino community in Florida,” the script reads.

A sample script of calls in Arizona names Sens. Rubio, Cruz and Paul as examples of Republicans who shut down the government.

Both urge listeners to call the state Republican Party and voice their concerns, providing a phone number.

The DNC would not disclose the size of the ad buy and campaign, but an aide said it would reach “hundreds of thousands” of voters.

“We’ll continue to hold Republicans like Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz accountable for shutting down the government and risking the full faith and credit of the United States,” DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “The GOP’s shutdown is hurting Latino communities nationwide and the DNC is going to make sure voters in every community know that Republicans are siding with the tea party over working families.”

Latino voters were a key piece of President Barack Obama’s successful reelection campaign against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and have been a constituency Republicans have been eager to court away from Democrats.

The Republican National Committee announced Monday it had hired Hispanic engagement directors in seven states for a ground-game campaign to have a year-round presence in Latino communities.

Amid the government shutdown, Democrats have rekindled efforts to pass immigration reform legislation in the House. The Senate in June passed a bipartisan immigration reform package, of which Rubio was a key architect and proponent.